Yahoo's Flickr offers 3 free months of its Pro service

Yahoo's holiday gift to the masses is three free months of its Flickr Pro photo and video hosting service, which normally costs $24.95 a year.

Sign up and you get unlimited uploads up to 50MB per photo, unlimited viewing of your photo library, the ability to post photos in as many as 60 groups as well as download high-resolution images and upload and play unlimited HD videos.

It's a pretty good deal for photo and video enthusiasts considering a free Flickr account normally only lets you upload 300MB every month, only view your most recent 200 photos, post photos in up to 10 groups, download smaller resized images and upload up to two videos a month.

There's a small catch, as Yahoo includes a disclaimer with the deal.

"To avoid abuse of our unlimited storage, we do monitor accounts for excessive usage. Yahoo! limits the number and size of photos allowed from an account within a given timeframe. While our goal is to ensure that everyone benefits from unlimited storage, Flickr is not intended to be used as a content distribution network," reads the fine print that accompanies the offer.

The free holiday gift is even open to people who don't yet have a Flickr account. You can sign up using a Yahoo, Facebook or Google account and you don't need to lay down a credit card number.

After signing on, pick a Flickr screen name and choose the holiday gift. After three months, your account reverts to a free Flickr account -- no strings attached.

It's a smart move on Yahoo's part, considering that just a few days ago masses of people were ditching Instagram because of poorly worded updated Terms of Use it announced last week. The photo sharing service later reversed course and said it would reword its policies, although as PCWorld's Ian Paul pointed out, Instagram's older terms are more liberal than the newer version it wanted to implement.

The older terms could give the company just as much license to control your content as before.

Get Yahoo's holiday gift here .

The five best productivity apps of 2012

It's been a big year for smartphones--the iPhone 5, the Galaxy S III, the debut of Windows Phone 8--but as always, it's the apps that matter.

Thankfully, 2012 witnessed the arrival of many killer apps for business users, tools that can save time, lower costs, and turbocharrge your overall productivity. Best of all, those that aren't free cost only a few bucks.

Below I've rounded up my picks for the five best business apps of the year--a mixture of gems for Android and iOS alike. These aren't the typical mainstream picks like Evernote and LogMeIn, which, though often invaluable to business users, have been on the scene for ages. No, I've got five lesser-known apps that deserve greater recognition. And that starts right here.

1. CallFlakes (Android)

Think about what you normally do after a phone call. CallFlakes does it for you. This clever ad-supported app swoops in whenever you end a call, offering six handy follow-up options: Text, Reminder, Email, Meeting, Share, and Call. (There's also a Web-search button in case you want to immediately Google something.)

It's literally a one-tap affair to launch any of those functions--incredibly useful for anyone who makes and takes a lot of calls.

2. Glyder (iOS)

Marketing can make or break a small business. With Glyder, you can create and distribute a variety of marketing messages--a daily deal, a coupon, a thank-you note, etc.--across a variety of platforms (email, Facebook, text message, etc.), all with a few taps on your iPhone. The app is incredibly easy to use and a real boon to any on-the-go business owner seeking a quick and effective marketing tool.

3. MailShot (iOS)

It's kind of ridiculous that iOS doesn't let you create email groups. MailShot does. With it you can build mail distribution groups (sales team, marketing department, key clients, etc.) right on your iPhone, then adds those groups to your address book, where they're accessible from all other apps. It's even Siri-friendly. The free version limits you to three groups with five recipients each; for all of $3.99, MailShot Pro raises the cap to 100 groups and 100 contacts. That's four bucks very well spent.

4. Maluuba: Your Siri Alternative (Android)

It may look like a Windows Phone app, but Maluuba has Apple in its crosshairs--specifically Siri, as evidenced right in its name. This voice-powered helper app that can do everything from checking the weather to scheduling appointments to finding the closest Fedex box. And unlike Siri, it doesn't yammer on and on; it just works. For free.

5. WorkFlowy (iOS)

WorkFlowy is little more than a browser-based outliner, but it's precisely that stripped-down simplicity that makes it such a powerful organization tool. I'll be honest: the WorkFlowy app is barely better than the mobile browser-based version. But it doesn't have to be. However you interact with WorkFlowy on your smartphone, you'll quickly come to find it indispensable.

Well, those are my picks. Now hit the comments and tell me which business apps rocked your world in 2012.